Attributed to Sir Anthony van Dyck (Antwerp 1599-1641 London)

Michael Jaffé published this sketch in 1979 as 'an unfinished, but well-preserved, Van Dyck of about 1617', noting that the 'brush-work itself has a rough impastive vigour, matched by the vibrant alternation in the fleshing between ruddy warmth and cool, optical grey' (op. cit., p. 41). He related this sketch to the Study of a Nude Youth, in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin (no. 175). He also associated it with another, similar study formerly with Goudstikker, which he gave in full to Van Dyck, and with a painting in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, which he considered to be by an imitator of Van Dyck. He loosely connected this group to the pen-drawings of chubby infants on pages sixty-four and sixty-five of Van Dyck's Antwerp Sketchbook. Eric Larsen gave the Goudstikker picture and the Stockholm picture unreservedly to Van Dyck (see literature below, nos. 314 and 315), while rejecting the Dublin picture (op. cit., see no. A25), and recorded this picture as a studio replica. This composition was evidently very popular, existing as it does in various versions; it was not only repeated by Van Dyck's contemporaries, but also later, as the English copy of this picture - made while it was in the collection of Sir Joshua Reynolds - attests.